Northwest Dive Club

YellowEye wrote:Very cool!
Do you know if he made it out with the prey?

I couldn't see all the way to the shore where he was. The other two times I have seen this they made it in with a cormorant. Grisly.
-Curt

I saw an eagle swimming toward shore today. I have seen this before when one grabs a prey which is too heavy for it to fly, so it uses its wings to paddle. The resolution is low because I had to really crop it, but taking the picture was a good break from mowing the lawn.
-Curt

Keeping track of nomenclature will keep you occupied for the rest of your life. It will never be settled and always disputed. I applaud your efforts. Metridium senile is one of the first I learned a half century ago. In that interval I have become Curt senile.

Last Sunday I was diving Hat Island barges. Just as I was getting back on the boat a gray whale surfaced about 50 feet away. It showed its back and then flukes. It resurfaced a few hundred yards away in the bay south of the marina, splashed around a bit in shallow water then did the spy thing in yo...

Watching whales provides me with some compensation for having to give up diving. In addition my travels to see whales, I am fortunate that I can observe them from my home here on the sound. One difference I have noticed is that the whales seem to be more social this year. Normally solitary, they han...

Alex: Thank you. I read the article in my dead tree copy of the magazine. I have been trying unsuccessfully to find the link to respond to Waynne's request.
-Curt

I have been happily out of the loop for several years while enjoying my retirement. An article in the April Scientific American titled " The Perfect Beast" shook me from my "dogmatic slumber". The article dealt with mixotrophs, organisms which both photosynthesize and consume oth...

Jan: As a whale enthusiast, I read your posting with great interest. I have been watching three grays feeding in front of my house for the last month. One of them appears to be a juvenile similar to the one you photographed. Since they have been hanging out on the east of Whidbey, I doubt it is the ...

Jan: You are getting spoiled. You are doing a new dive, in warm clear water, with your daughter. I would not dismiss any of the adventures I had with my sons. Is that Maya using the side mounts ?
-Curt

Chris: I wonder of the new ferry pier, when constructed, will serve to divert the currents the way the old pier did. You can let us know when it happens.
-Curt

My experience with Dodd is lots of boast traffic. The time to dive it is also the time to transit it. The rule was "Stay down! Don't surface in the narrows." Since you were going in the off season, how was the boat traffic?
-Curt
p.s. Thanks for the posting.

While I have dived PI a few times while deployed in the navy (1966-1990), you saw so much more than I saw. You mentioned Pong with his thick accent. When I am in a situation in which I struggle to understand, I realize it is because the speaker speaks my language better than I speak his. What a marv...

Wow. Sharks, morays, turtles, wrecks - wonderful. While my first tropical dive was in Florida (1964), the Keys were still on my bucket list when I had to give up diving. Your video is a close as I will get. Thanks for posting.
-Curt

I think the collective product of the regular photographers and observers on this site rival the Blue Planet. I love the Blue Planet enough that I have purchased the DVDs, yet I eagerly log on to NWDC to see what you all post. As one who has been forced to give up diving, but remains fascinated by t...

I think it curious that the 49th and 50th states, Alaska and Hawaii, serve as the endpoints of the humpback whale migration. They make the open ocean transit from their feeding waters in Alaska to their breeding waters in Hawaii. This differs from the gray whales which are feeding now in Puget Sound...

This shows that field identification of so many organisms just isn't possible. In this case, it required microscopic examination by an expert. It reminds me of a time when I had been diagnosed with a tapeworm. My physician narrowed it down to a few. We were going through the books together trying to...

Is it plant, animal, or something else?
Curt

https://www.haidagwaii.net/esss/diving.htm
I found this website. It appears to be up to date.
-Curt

When I look at the pictures of the marvelous variety of seastars, I am reminded of a conversation I had with another diver. We were both from Puget Sound and were diving in Fiji. He made the comment that he didn't dive in Puget Sound, because "There is nothing to see there." I mentioned th...

60south wrote:
Highlights: Finding a drone and two skate boards off Port Townsend. Oh, that and graduating with a PhD.

Congratulations, doctor.
-Curt

I try to get down to the Oregon coast over New Years each year to catch the start of the gray whale migration. It is easy to be dismissive of an animal which seems so common, but the other populations a gray whale are either extinct or nearly so. Our northeast Pacific population is the lone exceptio...

Ghost shrimp are a preferred food for gray whales. The state stopped issuing commercial fishing licenses to encourage the whales to keep feeding. It might be fun to dive the same spot after the whales have made their first pass through in the spring to see how the bottom looks then.
-Curt

Jan: While a long way from Whidbey Island, and not many critters, this is a wonderful series. Your photography skills didn't abandon you on the trip south. What a marvelous birthday gift. In my mind, the best part was having Maya go along. Happy birthday.
-Curt

Although I am a former diver, I still find interesting (to me) things in the sound. While walking the beach I came across the remains of what appears to be a lion's mane consuming a Pycnopodia . I wonder how an animal normally up in the water column would encounter a benthic animal. It didn't work o...

Derek, there is always something special to being the first. To a climber it's a first ascent, virgin wrecks for wreck divers, for wildlife enthusiasts a first sighting. Congratulations. Greg, thank you for offering your expertise on this and on the web site in general. No one would have known if it...